So this is Adventmas
Posted By: Zach Hoag
It's weird.
I've never really used the word "Advent." Never had a reason to.
If you didn't grow up Catholic or maybe Lutheran or something, you probably don't use it either. It's "Christmas" in the evangelical world. Christmas. Sure, there might be an Advent calendar or an Advent wreath, but those are just traditions, odd ones at that, and the real show, the real thing worth getting excited about is Christmas.
But I'm excited about the word Advent this year, and I've been using it a lot, especially when I talk at church and even when I pray. And there are a couple of reasons for this.
Here's Reason #1. It's different. That's lame, I know, but I like the word and I'm using the word first and foremost because it's different. And so using a different word makes me think about the season differently. And that's good. I'm viewing the season through a new lens.
A church out in Portland came up with this thing called Advent Conspiracy which is all about viewing the Christmas, I mean Advent, season a little differently. At Dwell, we've gotten excited about this mainly because part of our mission as a community is to engage those in deepest need, just as Jesus has engaged with humanity's deepest need; and AC fits that part of our mission quite well. Christmas is about giving? Then certainly it is about giving even outside of family and community lines to those on the highways and in the hedges of life.
Next Sunday, we'll donate the entire offering to help fund a clean-water well in the developing world (because nothing is more necessary than clean water) and to meet needs at the Jean's orphanage in Haiti. Can you get some money in the box next week to get it to our goal of a grand?
And here's Reason #2. This one's easy. I love Christmas so much because I love Jesus so much. And Advent reminds me, whenever I say it, that Christmas is so wonderful because Jesus is so wonderful. Let me explain...
"Advent" is from the Latin "adventus" which means "coming"; Advent is the season when the Church celebrates the first coming of our Messiah, Jesus of Nazareth. It is a season in which we relive the anticipation of men and angels leading up to that day in Bethlehem when a Savior was born - a refugee King in a nasty barn, bundled up in a feeding trough. And we relive it because we want to remember and not forget - we don't want to become numb to the fact that the world lay hopeless and enslaved and oppressed and exiled and dark before light and love and hope burst forth in the birth of this baby; that no one had seen God, and for 400 years no one had heard God, and then suddenly God was HERE, God with US, God become flesh, moving into our neighborhood!
How incredible this is! How incredible that God became man to identify with me, to identify with me all the way down to the gutter of life, all in order to rescue me from the slavery of my sin and myself, to redeem the world from the effects of all sin, to bring in a new kingdom of justice and peace.
Reliving this is remembering the meaning of gift: that Jesus emptied himself of all that was due him as the Son of God to live the life I could not live, die the death I should have died, and thereby give me life now and forever by his sheer grace; that he broke down the walls to seek and to save the lost and create a whole new society of reconciled reconcilers who now live to make him known by doing the things he did.
And that is why I love Christmas. That is why I love Christmas carols and Christmas trees and Christmas presents and Christmas stockings and Christmas cookies and Christmas breakfast, because all of it is celebration of and representation of The Gift.
Advent means that it's all about Jesus. All about the fact that he came. And that he came to us.
So this year, for me, Christmas is Advent.
Or maybe, Adventmas.
Merry Adventmas.
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